Inner German Border

The Inner German border (German: innerdeutsche Grenze or deutsch–deutsche Grenze; initially also Zonengrenze) was the frontier between the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, West Germany) from 1949 to 1990. Not including the similar but physically separate Berlin Wall, the border was 1,393 kilometres (866 mi) long and ran from the Baltic Sea to Czechoslovakia.

It was formally established on 1 July 1945 as the boundary between the Western and Soviet occupation zones of Germany. On the eastern side, it was made one of the world's most heavily fortified frontiers, defined by a continuous line of high metal fences and walls, barbed wire, alarms, anti-vehicle ditches, watchtowers, automatic booby traps and minefields. It was patrolled by 50,000 armed GDR guards who faced tens of thousands of West German, British and U.S. guards and soldiers. In the hinterlands behind the border, more than a million NATO and Warsaw Pact troops awaited the possible outbreak of war.

The border was a physical manifestation of Winston Churchill's metaphorical Iron Curtain that separated the Soviet and Western blocs during the Cold War. It marked the boundary between two ideological systems – capitalist democracy and single-party communism. Built by East Germany in phases from 1952 to the late 1980s, the fortifications were constructed to stop the large-scale emigration of East German citizens to the West, about 1,000 of whom are said to have died trying to cross it during its 45-year existence. It caused widespread economic and social disruption on both sides; East Germans living in the region suffered especially draconian restrictions.

The better-known Berlin Wall was a physically separate, less elaborate, and much shorter border barrier surrounding West Berlin, more than 155 kilometres (96 mi) to the east of the inner German border (Berlin having been similarly divided by the four powers after World War II, despite the entire city being in the Soviet zone, thus creating an enclave of capitalism surrounded by the communist east). On 9 November 1989, the East German government announced the opening of the Berlin Wall and the inner German border. Over the following days, millions of East Germans poured into the West to visit. Hundreds of thousands moved permanently to the West in the following months as more crossings were opened, and ties between long-divided communities were re-established as border controls became little more than a cursory formality. The inner German border was not completely abandoned until 1 July 1990, exactly 45 years to the day since its establishment, and only three months before German reunification formally ended Germany's division.

Little remains of the inner German border's fortifications. Its route has been declared part of a "European Green Belt" linking national parks and nature reserves along the course of the old Iron Curtain from the Arctic Circle to the Black Sea. Museums and memorials along the old border commemorate the division and reunification of Germany and, in some places, preserve elements of the fortifications.